Zagi Mt Bastnasite

I have no intention of ever selling this specimen, and my daughter who also has her collection loves it as much as I do, so I presume she will never sell it either. Just yesterday the owner of a large well known collection here in Australia asked me after seeing it what a specimen like that would be worth, and well it actually made me curious also. Anyway I thought where better to get some value estimations then right here.

You really have a fabulous Bastnäsite. An appraisal in this forum of "trophy-quality" specimens that are clearly among the best for locality or best of species makes little sense. Your guesses as to what such a specimen might fetch at an auction or when sold on the irocks website is probably as good as that of anyone else based on the prices you can see on the web. Knut

Great specimen of a mineral that is almost never found in great specimens.

Needs a trim.

I'd sure want to scope the base of the crystal, just to be sure.

36mm is a very healthy size.

What'd you or your daughter pay for it?

Value is hard to estimate; the nouveau riche can appreciate a shiny Sweet Home rhodo, but wouldn't be intested in something small and brown. Trick is to find a loaded collector that actually knows what the mineral is and why it's such a good piece... 3k would be a bargain, the big boys selling to the kids with the big toys, though... sky's the limit... 7k, or a few times that if it's Wilensky quality??? I have no trouble imagining that on a custom base in a nice glass case at Tucson or Munich with a five digit tag... though perhaps I'm biased towards cool rare things.

One has to wonder how many ass-kicking perfect matrix bastnaesites came out of Zagi, and bear in mind that that's the only locality you're gonna get a crystal like that from. One might suggest that a piece like that is quite a bit rarer than an old master painting...

Rock wrote: "More that ten thousand? Probably, but perhaps when the economy gets a bit better."

I would argue the opposite. Prices might go down when the economy gets better. An economist said on NPR that some investors were buying art now because they had lost faith in the stock market. Those high end buyers who see expensive minerals as an investment might be thinking likewise.

Don't trim it yourself would be my advice. There's a couple of companies offering trimming services, think they advertise in Min Rec. I think Bryan Leese (sp?) has a big lab and experienced people. Pay whatever they want, a little trim will make that thing dead seksy.

That rock trims easily, but I'd be scared to death of the xl popping off. In fact I'd look very carefully at the base of the xl to make sure that hadn't already happened. Professional preparators have a lot of experience and some cool tricks, but they all make you sign a waiver that releases them from any damage done to the specimen. Caveat Emptor.

Craig,I think it would be impossible to insure a specimen for anything else than transport damage if you decided to send it to someone for trimming. And even insurance against transport damages for a mineral specimen of a high value would probably not be easy. To get an insurance against an accidemntal break or the event that the crystal should pop off matrix during trimming is probably impossible. To decide a premium for an insurance you would have to be able to calculate a risk which is quite impossible. I think if you ask yourself if you would put up an insurance against such an event yourself, the answer would be no. But maybe I am too conservative. If the insurance business had been more cautious in the way they handled deafult risks in the capital market, AIG and other companies would not need billions of taxpayers money to bail them out.

(Many people do not like cutting to trim a specimen, but in your case a clean cut through the matrix could give you the exact trim you would like and a specimen that could also stand on a flat surface. Such a procedure would be more predictable as you could bandage the part of the matrix with the crystal before the cutting. I would at least consider that option if you are afraid the crystal might pop off or that the trimming could go the wrong way through the matrix).

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